ALPs News
Boone Edition
Opinion Continuum
The kids were excited to start the opinion continuum again this year. In case you aren't familiar with this, there is a statement written on the board and kids have to decide whether they strongly agree with the statement, strongly disagree with the statement of fall somewhere in the middle. The kids in 2nd through 5th grade have to write about the topic and give reasons to support their answer. We then share our opinions with the class. Usually the topic comes from a Scholastic News Debate of the Week so we can then read what other kids thought about the topic. Our topics this year have been:
*Kids should lose recess for bad behavior
*There should be a law requiring kids to do chores
*Playing video games is a sport
*Voting should be required by law
*The United States should get rid of the penny
*Stores should be open on Thanksgiving
*Kids should be allowed to quit activities
Ask your child about his or her opinion about those topics! You might be surprised by their answer.
*Kids should lose recess for bad behavior
*There should be a law requiring kids to do chores
*Playing video games is a sport
*Voting should be required by law
*The United States should get rid of the penny
*Stores should be open on Thanksgiving
*Kids should be allowed to quit activities
Ask your child about his or her opinion about those topics! You might be surprised by their answer.
Second Grade
Second grade has been working on thinking skills, problem solving and current events. One thing we read (and watched a short video about) was robot waiters in China. The kids were amazed by these waiters. I had them work in groups to come up with a list of pros and cons about having a robot waiter. They really enjoyed this activity. Our focus for problem solving has been math word problems. We will have several challenging problems weekly that they work on and the kids will be allowed to go at their own pace. Right now, we are working on and practicing all of the strategies we will use to solve the weekly word problems. We have also read about many current events/history (spiders, a turkey problem in Arizona, Veteran's Day) and focused on higher level reading and thinking during those activities.
Third Grade
Third grade is reading Bunnicula and really focusing on in-depth character analysis. The kids are enjoying this book. For thinking skills we read about robot waiters in China and worked together to come up with a list of pros and cons for robot waiters. We also worked on the thinking skill of "flexibility" by transforming ordinary objects into other things and the skill of "deductive reasoning" by solving logic puzzles, which the kids absolutely love! We also continue working on math problem solving with a focus on multi-step word problems.
Fourth Grade
Fourth grade has done a lot of work with thinking skills. One activity we did was read and watch a video about robot waiters in China. We took some time to come up with a list of the pros and cons for having robot waiters. The other thinking skills we worked on were "deductive reasoning" with logic puzzles, "eliminate" by designing a car and then eliminating extra features and "elaborate" by adding on to some basic sentences with details to make them more interesting. We are discussing mysteries and getting ready to begin reading The Westing Game.
Fifth Grade
Fifth grade spent a majority of first quarter working on our Bio-Poem projects. The kids amazed me with how technologically savvy they are. I was also impressed at how far above and beyond expectations they took these projects. We will be doing another project where they will get to incorporate technology toward the end of the year. I am excited to see how they turn out. Our brain warm ups (thinking skills) look a little different this year. They include a very difficult vocabulary word, a quote that the kids need to try determine the meaning of and some sort of brain twister. They are also working on math problem solving as part of thinking skills. The kids will be summarizing what they have read in The Westing Game, finishing the book and playing the Stock Market game. We will be busy!